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VIOLENCE IN NARRATIVE:
IMPER1UM AND IDENTITY IN ROMAN EPIC
by
Alan John Heinrich
April 1996
A dissertation submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of State
University of New York at Buffalo
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
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UMI Number: 9634440
Copyright 1996 by
Heinrich, Alan John
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(C) Copyright by
Alan Heinrich
1996
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for eileen, ahoays
iii
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all my friends— my
colleagues and teachers— here at Buffalo for making the last five years such a
pleasant experience: challenging intellectually, supportive, and not without
some laughs along the way. The 7th floor of Clemens has been a generous
and special place, and I will always remember it fondly. I owe particular
thanks to the members of my committee: to Steve Dyson, for his many
stimulating thoughts on Roman history and material culture; to Jack
Peradotto, for sharing his insights on narrative with me in the course of my
seminar work and beyond, ideas which have been instrumental in the
development of my approach here; to my outside reader, Dave Fredrick,
whose careful and diligent reading of my work has provided me with
numerous clarifications and paths for future revisions; and especially to my
dissertation adviser, Martha Malamud, in whose seminars many of the ideas
presented here first developed, and whose generosity in reading, re-reading
and discussing my work has been tirelessly demonstrated. My beautiful
daughters Kelli and Shana have been as understanding and patient with their
student daddy as two little people possibly could be. Finally, this work is
dedicated to my wife Eileen, who has handled the burdens of these past years
with grace, humor, and constant support.
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Table of Contents
Chapter
I. DECLINE AND ROMANUAS................................................................. 1
1. Externi Mores Revisited:
Vergil's Hybrid Roman Voice..................................................... 4
2. O temporal O mores!: Empire and Decline......................... 15
3. Differentiating Violence at Rome............................................ 21
H. VIOLENCE AND EMPIRE: VERGIL'S CARTHAGE
AND THE FAILURE OF GENERATIVE VIOLENCE
IN THE AENE1D....................................................................................... 28
1. Girard's Generative Theory of Sacrifice................................. 29
2. The Objection of Magus:
Sacrificial Failures and the Failure of Sacrifice in Vergil 35
3. Violence and Identity:
Vergil's Carthage and the Monstrous Double....................... 46
4. Civil War at Carthage.................................................................. 68
m. MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND EMPIRE:
THE IRONIES OF NOSTALGIA IN LUCAN'S CIVIL WAR 78
1. Bella Plus Qiiam Civilia........................................................... 81
2. Lucan's Epic Memory.................................................................. 93
3. Cato and the Ghost of Rom a................................................... 105
4. Cato in Libya: Virtus, Fortuna, and Dreams of Empire.... 118
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IV. VIOLENCE AND ORIGINS:
THE TRANSGRESSION OF STATIUS' THEBA1D........................ 134
1. Violence and Theodicy............................................................... 138
a. Just War and Fratricide......................................................... 138
b. Saevo tanta inclementia caelo est................................... 148
2. Longa Retro Series: Fratricide and Narrative...................... 153
a. Repetition and Origins:
The Extension of Thebes' vetus omen......................... 157
b. Harmonia's Necklace:
The Lateral Transgressions of Narrative...................... 166
c. Repetition and Closure in Thesean Clemency 174
V. EMPIRE AND IDEOLOGY:
ROMAN READINGS OF IMPERIALISM........................................... 183
Numa versus Romulus:
The doubleness of Roman Imperial Ideology....................... 184
Cicero's De Imperio Cn. Pompei................................................ 190
Tacitus' Agricola............................................................................. 199
WORKS CITED.......................................................................................... 215
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Abstract
Civil war pervades the Roman epic tradition. In this study of Vergil,
Lucan and Statius, I contend that these three poets engage the Roman
historiographical tradition as they venture to understand the cause, or origin,
of Roman civil strife. What is the meaning of civil war for Roman identity?
Roman historians had long considered civil war as the culmination of a
process of moral decline, a process initiated by Rome's imperial expansion
into the East. According to this view, civil war was regarded as a product of
Rome's "de-Romanization," its turn away from authentic "Romanness." At
the same time, such a conception of decline highlights the ambivalence
towards the imperial project itself among numerous Roman authors:
imperium was both the privileged field for Roman virtus as well as a
dangerous, infectious enterprise responsible for Rome's own fall. Roman
epic exhibits a similar ambivalence towards Empire, I argue, but does so in the
course of destabilizing the very notion of decline: epic re-writes civil war back
into Roman identity, as an inherent problematic of imperial virtus itself.
Vergil's Carthage and Lucan's Cato represent two complementary epic loci
which undercut the idealization of the Roman past implied in the discourse
of decline. Vergil's representation of Carthage blurs the boundaries between
Roman and enemy, calling into question the possibility of licit (and
generative) violence in a way which highlights Carthage's ambiguous
position in the Roman historical imagination, suspended between Empire
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